CONSCIOUSNESS AND FREEDOM
by Uwe Meixner-- The Determinism and Freedom Philosophy Website
--

It is
not hard to find the established doctrines of determinism and freedom
in the English-speaking philosophical world pretty tiring. Part of the
reason may be that they remain uncertain at best. More of us have this
attitude to Compatibilism and Incompatibilism. We should have it too,
it certainly seems to me, to such variants as Semi-Compatibilism --
determinism is consistent with responsibility but not with freedom.
Prof. Meixner teaches at the University of Regensburg, and is the
author of The Two Sides of
Being: A Reassessment of Psycho-Physical Dualism. He
certainly
has untiring things to say of determinism and freedom. One of them is
that there is a more fundamental connection between consciousness and
freedom than British and American philosophy has supposed. Another, yet
more untiring, is that consciousness would be out of place in a truly
deterministic world. Still more bracing, there is religion at the end
of
the story. Maybe it can be naturalized. Something else is certain. Here
is some strong reflection that has the resoluteness of the history of
German
philosophy.

1. Two Less Usual Questions
Regarding Consciousness
What is the meaning of consciousness?
Before offering some speculations
regarding the
(full) meaning of consciousness, I propose to tackle a somewhat less
ambitious
question: What is consciousness good for? More precisely: What is the
advantage that a
conscious creature can draw from being conscious? That advantage surely
must be part
of the meaning of consciousness.
It seems undeniable that there must be some good in being conscious to
some
creature. For if there were no good in being conscious to any creature,
why, then, does
consciousness exist? The assertion that nothing existing in nature
exists in vain is
presumably a bit of an exaggeration. But it certainly seems hard to
believe that
consciousness exists as the rather widespread phenomenon in nature that
it is, and at the
same time has no positive function for any creature.

2. The Evolutionary Advantage of
Being Conscious
It seems to me, on the contrary, that
consciousness has at least one
very robust positive
function for all conscious creatures: consciousness enables them – not
always, but more
often than not – to survive long enough to contribute their genetic
information to the
genetic constitution of the next generation of their species. There are
no tooth- and
talonless cats around hunting mice. Why? Because tooth- and talonless
cats could not
survive long enough to produce offspring. There are, likewise, no
non-conscious cats
prowling over the lawn. Why? Because non-conscious cats could not
survive long
enough to produce offspring.
Not every living creature needs
consciousness for ensuring survival up
to and
including successful propagation. A tree does not need consciousness
for that. But
creatures that are constituted in such a way that they have the ability
of wide-ranging
self-locomotion and that cannot survive in nature without employing
that ability cannot
do without consciousness. They need consciousness for finding the food
they feed on
and for dodging the deadly dangers their environment is replete with.
Being conscious
is a necessary condition of their survival, and therefore consciousness
has a positive
function for them and is a boon for them.
This seems obvious and uncontroversial. But, in fact, it is a bit
surprising. For
would not a well-balanced intricate network of reactive dispositions,
installed in the
brain of these creatures and answering in a differentiated
life-preserving manner to a
huge number of incoming complexes of stimuli, serve the same purposes
that
consciousness is said to serve? Many philosophers these days are only
too happy to
answer “yes” to this question, adding that the findings of neurobiology
more or less
conclusively show that the possibility envisaged in the question is in
fact the case.

3. Is Consciousness an Activity
of the Brain?

If neurobiology is right, then, it seems, we are left with a trilemma:
either consciousness
does not exist, or exists and is just this: the activity, or part of
the activity, of a well-
balanced intricate network of reactive dispositions installed in the
brain, answering in a
differentiated life-preserving manner to a huge number of incoming
complexes of
stimuli, or consciousness exists but is of no service to the conscious
organism. As is
well-known, Daniel Dennett is happy to embrace either the first or the
second horn of
this trilemma,1 whereas David Chalmers is often misunderstood – though
not without
his own doing – as being content with its third horn.2
Though Descartes may have been wrong about many things, perhaps even
about
his own existence as a res cogitans, he was dead right about one thing,
which we can
also gather from his writings: that there is nothing more rationally
certain than the
existence of consciousness. I cannot here defend this view if it be
thought to stand in
need of defending. I hope, therefore, that everyone will agree that
denying the existence
of consciousness is not a viable option. Consciousness exists, and not
only in human
beings: it is rather common throughout the animal kingdom. To believe
otherwise, to
restrict consciousness to human beings only, seems to me a rather
uncharitable position.
Embracing the first horn of the trilemma –
denying the existence of
consciousness – is out of the question. And there is nothing attractive
to theory in
embracing the third horn: in accepting the existence of consciousness
and holding at the
same time that it is of no service to conscious organisms. I have
already addressed this
option and what can be held against it.
We, therefore, seem to be left with the second
horn of the trilemma:
the
identification of consciousness with the activity of a network of
reactive dispositions in
the brain, in accordance with incoming stimuli, for the benefit of the
organism.
But mind-body dualists will hold that consciousness – though
associated, in a
manner not yet well understood, with cerebral activity, with the
excercise of the
physical, electrochemical powers of a physical organ – is not identical
with that activity
or with anything physical. But how can this be more than a statement of
blind belief? If
neurobiology shows that a network of reactive dispositions, installed
in the brain and
answering in a differentiated manner to incoming stimuli, serves the
very same purposes
that consciousness is said to serve, must we not conclude that
consciousness is simply
the activity, or part of the activity, of that dispositional network –
given that both the
nonexistence and the epiphenomenality of consciousness are out of the
question? The
mere appeal to intuitions – however fervently upheld – seems
insufficient for
distinguishing non-epiphenomenally existing consciousness from brain
activity.
But, for one thing, even if cerebral activity were the functional
equivalent of
consciousness, cerebral activity might not be able to exist without
consciousness –
consciousness being, nonetheless, different from it. This is a way of
reconciling the
non-epiphenomenal existence of consciousness with mind-body dualism on
the one
hand and the purported findings of neurobiology on the other. If
nonphysical
consciousness were, on nomological grounds, a necessary condition of
the cerebral
activity which is its functional equivalent, then it could hardly be
said to be an
epiphenomenon in the sense that is ontologically negative and a reason
for
philosophical dissatisfaction.
The crucial question, however, is whether a certain network of reactive
dispositions in the brain that answers in a differentiated manner to
incoming stimuli
does indeed serve the very same purposes that consciousness serves. In
order to answer
this question negatively, we need not deny neurobiological findings, we
merely need to
deny a certain interpretation of these findings. The findings of
neurobiology point in the
direction of the following conclusion, though they are still far from
having conclusively
established it:

For every conscious event A there is a brain event B such that
everything that
causes A also causes B, and vice versa, and such that everything that
is caused
by A is also caused by B, and vice versa.

The relationship between conscious events (events in consciousness) and
certain brain
events that can be gathered from the preceding thesis is their causal
equivalence. Thus
the findings of neurobiology point towards the causal equivalence of
conscious events
and certain brain events, although, as I said, neurobiology is far from
having established
even that much.
A certain network of reactive dispositions in
the brain that answers in
a
differentiated manner to incoming stimuli can therefore be said to be
the causal
equivalent of consciousness. But we are not forced to conclude from
this fact (if it is a
fact) that the dispositional network and consciousness serve exactly
the same purposes,
that they are functional equivalents. I am aware that many thinkers
identify functional
equivalence with causal equivalence, functional role with causal role;
but this
identification is a mistake, because sometimes there is a functional
difference, in a clear
sense, on top of a causal equivalence. And so it is in the case of
conscious events and
the brain events that are their causal equivalents.
Every conscious event intrinsically signifies
something to someone; in
the
overwhelming majority of cases, conscious events usefully intrinsically
signify
something to the subject of consciousness concerned, and hence function
to the
advantage of that subject. In contrast, no brain event intrinsically
signifies anything to
anyone. Therefore: although conscious events and certain brain events
are – presumably
– causal equivalents, they are not functional equivalents.
In this perspective, it is quite clear that
the trilemma adduced above
is a false
one. We can fully accept the findings of neurobiology and retain our
belief in the
existence of consciousness that is useful to conscious organisms, and
nevertheless there
is no need for us to identify consciousness with some existing activity
of the brain. In
order to see things this way, one merely needs to avoid interpreting
scientific data in a
metaphysically biased way. These data accord some justification to the
assertion that
consciousness and a certain type of brain activity are causally
equivalent; they accord
no justification to the assertion that they are functionally
equivalent.

4. Consciousness as Intrinsic
Signification, and Indeterminism

The next questions that must concern us here
are the following two: (1)
How can the
invoked concept of intrinsic signification be elucidated? (2) What is
the significance of
the fact that conscious events have functional roles that are different
from the functional
roles of the brain events that are their causal equivalents?
Regarding question (1): An event is intrinsically significant if, and
only if, by
and in itself it provides immediate information – that is, information
which neither
involves causation nor translation – to exactly one of its own
constituents. Thus a pain
event, for example, is intrinsically significant, since by and in
itself it provides
immediate information to exactly one of its own constituents: to the
subject of the pain.
Indeed, as I said, every conscious event – whether without an
intentional object (as a
pain event) or with one (as an event of visual perception) – is an
intrinsically significant
event, and it also seems to be true that every intrinsically
significant event is a
conscious event.
There is a further question: What is the nature of the intrinsic
addressee of the
immediate information provided by an intrinsically significant event?
One candidate for
the holder of this role that comes to mind is the conscious organism
with which the
intrinsically significant event is associated. But the organism is not
a constituent of an
intrinsically significant event associated with it (though sometimes it
is an intentional
object of such an event), and therefore it cannot be the intrinsic
addressee of the
immediate information provided by that event. A headache that I have at
some time – a
more than merely unpleasant sensation – is an intrinsically significant
event that is
associated with this conscious organism, with my living body; but my
body is not a
constituent of that event. The true intrinsic addressee of the
immediate information that
my headache provides by and in itself to exactly one of its own
constituents is not my
body or any part of it, not even my brain. I am myself that addressee.
My headache has a certain causal equivalent, an
electrochemical event
in my
brain. But the latter event is not intrinsically significant. If it
were, it would have to have
an intrinsic addressee – one of its own constituents – to whom it
provides immediate
information; but it has no such constituent. Therefore, the
electrochemical event in my
brain, though a causal equivalent, is not a functional equivalent of my
headache.
My headache is intrinsically significant to me; the corresponding
electrochemical event in my brain, though a causal equivalent of the
former event, is not
intrinsically significant to me. What is the point of this extra
function my headache has?
This brings us to the second question formulated above: the question of
the significance
of the fact that conscious events have functional roles that are
different from the
functional roles of the brain events that are their causal equivalents.
What is the point of
their intrinsically signifying something to someone, while brain events
do not
intrinsically signify anything to anyone?
Regarding question (2): One possible answer to this question is to say
that there
simply is no point to the fact mentioned in it. But this is not a
plausible answer. My
headache, indeed, may have its extra function uselessly, but this is
certainly not true of
every pain event.
We get to the heart of the matter if we ask ourselves what would be the
point of
there being intrinsically significant events – conscious events – if
determinism were
true. By determinism I mean the doctrine that the laws of nature alone
are sufficient to
determine the entire history of the world if a complete initial segment
of that history is
given.3
Under determinism, information – immediate or not – cannot be
action-relevant
to anyone, for the simple reason that under determinism there cannot be
any actions,
where by an action I mean the exclusion by an agent at a certain time t
of at least one
nomologically possible continuation of the history of the world after
time t. Clearly, if
determinism were true, then no such excluding could be done at any time
t, because,
under determinism, at every time t there is just one nomologically
possible continuation
of the history of the world after time t (and that single nomologically
possible
continuation cannot be excluded because it cannot but be the actual
continuation of the
history of the world after time t).
Thus, if determinism were true, there would be
no point in there being
intrinsically significant events, no point in there being events which
provide immediate
information to exactly one of their own constituents. The existence of
such events
would be utterly otiose – a fairly bad joke of nature. Why? Because
intrinsically
significant events, conscious events, are evidently geared to providing
information that,
usually, is maximally action-relevant to an agent – whereas under
determinism there
could be no actions and only agents that cannot act. Unless nature has
done a very large
thing – namely, the bringing forth of widespread consciousness –
utterly in vain,
determinism must be false.
The function of intrinsic signification that a conscious event has, and
that the
brain event which is its causal equivalent has not, is to give the
agent, which is intrinsic
to the conscious event, in the most immediate manner possible
information on which to
base its actions. That agent – for example, I – is in the service of a
certain living
organism (which, in its turn, is in the service of the agent); it is
nothing other than the
soul of that organism.

5. The Biological Soul Both as
Subject of Consciousness and Agent

The soul of the organism is the subject of
consciousness which is
implicit in the
conscious events that are associated with the organism, the entity to
which the
information provided by them is immediately and intrinsically
addressed. Normally, the
information provided by conscious events fits more or less tightly the
task of the soul
that is to use this information (i. e., that has evolved to use this
information) in acting
for the survival and the well-being of the organism of which it is the
soul. However, the
fit between conscious information and its (so to speak)
evolution-intended use is much
less tight in the case of modern human souls – because their ancestors
have managed to
secure, in the course of thousands of years, an environment that,
normally, is rather
depleted of dangers for human beings and, on the other hand, full of
easily accessible
resources for them. This historical matter of fact is responsible for
the liberty (though
not by itself for the capacity) that modern human souls have to
pursue
interests which
can be broadly described as cultural. But certainly the generation of
culture is, from the
evolutionary perspective, only a secondary field of consciousness – as
is the generation
of pure (i. e., nonfunctional) joy, which plausibly can already be
found at the subhuman
level4 – and a secondary task for the souls of organisms. The primary
field of
consciousness and the primary task for the souls of organisms is
survival.
infinite duration into the past if the history of the world is of
infinite duration into the past.

6. Consciousness and Freedom

I have argued that consciousness would be out
of place in a
deterministic world, since
the use of consciousness is to help secure the survival of a living
organism by providing
its soul, whose appearance in time is an outcome of the evolutionary
process, in the
right manner with information of the right kind – information on which
the soul can
base its actions. In a deterministic world there would be no actions,
and while
consciousness in a deterministic world would still have its function of
intrinsic
signification, its having that function whereas its cerebral causal
equivalent is lacking it
would be a fact that, contrary to appearance, is without any
significance and therefore a
fact that is utterly misleading from the metaphysical point of view. It
is hard to believe
that nature might play such a trick on us (let alone God).
An action is, qua action, a free action in the sense that the initial
segment of the
history of the world that is prior to it does not determine it (on the
basis of the laws of
nature); otherwise, the nomologically possible continuations of the
history of the world
that are excluded by it would already have been excluded by the initial
segment of the
history of the world that is prior to it. Therefore: although some
conscious events solicit
actions – for example, the pain that ensues upon touching a very hot
object – no
conscious event determines an action. Hence it is a mistake to assume
that actions are
(sufficiently) caused by conscious events. If one wants to say that
actions are caused by
something, then one must say that they are caused by the agent, by the
soul of the
organism. The information that a conscious event provides to that agent
is, therefore,
nondeterminative; it leaves the ultimate decision what to do with it up
to the agent (but
certainly the agent-soul is not always able to use the
information
provided to it
beneficially).
That every action is free in the sense just
described does not yet mean
that its
agent had a choice about it: that there was an alternative possible
action open to the
agent at the time. But unless there is some inscrutable determination
at work on top of
nomological determination, it follows that every action is such that
its agent had a
choice about it.
The installation of an agent, acting in favor of and through its
organism on the
basis of immediate nondeterminative information provided to it in
conscious events of
which it is the subject, the installation of a soul on top of all the
batteries of automatic
reaction mechanisms an organism possesses has proved to be a rather
successful
invention of evolution. One decisive factor of that success is of
course that most things
that are of vital importance to the organism are not effected by its
agent-soul at all, but
precisely by the organism’s automatic mechanisms. The agent-soul is
there for the less
common contingencies, and it is usually separated from most other
things that vitally
concern the organism by not being provided in consciousness with
immediate
information about them.
Within these limits, however, within the
limits set by its state of
information and
its range of choices (the extent of which range is directly
proportional to the richness of
its state of information), the power of the agent-soul – especially of
the human soul –
can be very great, even to the extent of transcending the interests of
its organism. This is
strikingly illustrated by an old story which German pupils learning
Latin in the 1960s
and 1970s could still read in their textbooks, but which, presumably,
is too awfully
heroic for the taste of the present time. I am speaking about the story
of Mucius
Scaevola. Mucius Scaevola, when captured in the attempt to assassinate
King Porsenna
who was laying siege to Rome, held his right hand into the fire and
allowed it to be
consumed by it, thereby dissuading Porsenna from further laying siege
to Rome,
convincing him that it is full of hundreds of Mucius Scaevolas fearing
neither death nor
pain in defending their nation.
Imagine the pain, imagine the soul that withstood it. The story is
probably a
legend; but comparable things have really happened, as we all know.

7. The Insect-Objection

It is time to consider the serious objections
that can be raised
against the views on
consciousness I advocate in this paper.
One objection is this: Insects are conscious
animals. They, for
example,
experience colors. But at the same time they are automata that blindly
follow the
programs that are activated in them in reaction to outward or inward
stimuli. Hence the
proposed link between consciousness and freedom of action does not
exist.
I respond that the objector is overly impressed by reports on insects
that, if
encountering some objectively insignificant anomaly in the process of
achieving their
preset goals, go through their preset rigid routines to achieve these
goals an indefinite
number of times (as often as one makes them encounter the very same
anomaly). These
reports are true, of course. But of course they do not show that the
entire life of insects
consists in rigid routines and reflexes.
If this were the case, if an insect never ever had a choice about
anything in any
situation of its life, then there would be no point in its being
conscious. A set of non-
consciously operating mechanisms triggered by non-consciously received
stimuli would
be quite enough to steer it for a while through the dangers to the
resources of the part of
the world that is its environment. But while nature is sometimes
prodigal, it usually is
not, and consciousness is too widespread a phenomen, even in the
kingdom of insects,
to be a superfluous excrescence of evolution. This points us to the
assumption that even
an insect sometimes has a choice , a small choice undoubtedly, and a
small soul that
makes the choice, while being at the same time the subject of the
insect’s small
consciousness.
There cannot be much deliberation going on when an insect makes a
choice,
certainly. But, in the first place, the presence of deliberation is not
a necessary condition
of making choices (since even we make choices – and rational ones –
without
deliberation, and such choices are far too often the right choices as
that they could be
the products of a mere chance generator); and in the second place, a
rudimentary form
of deliberation – consisting simply in the naked presentation of
alternative possibilities
– may well be present even when an insect (its soul) makes a choice.
(Even insects seem
to be capable of perplexity and bewilderment; if they are indeed
capable of these states,
rudimentary deliberation should also not be beyond them.)
What is indeed crucial for the making of
choices is the presence of a
unitary
subject of both consciousness and agency which has at least a
rudimentary
consciousness of itself (and of its “realm” – the organism – within its
environment: a
sense of being in the world). But it is sufficient for rudimentary
self-consciousness if
there are, for example, pain events associated with the organism: there
cannot be a pain
of any subject of consciousness (and every pain is a pain of some
subject of
consciousness) without being in its consciousness its pain.
Should biology discover that insects are in fact in every situation and
in every
respect deterministic automata, then we should reconsider the question
whether they are
indeed conscious; then we should seriously draw into consideration the
conclusion that
they are not conscious at all (even though they have sensory organs and
nervous
systems that are remote analogs of ours). Why, for example, should an
insect feel pain –
and hence have a subject of consciousness (which, properly speaking,
feels the pain) – if
there is never ever a situation in which the insect – or more properly
speaking the
insect’s agent-soul, which is identical to its subject of consciousness
– can effectively
decide to do something or other about it? For avoiding that a
particular damage to the
body becomes worse than it is, the insect does not need to feel pain,
if it is always the
case – in any such situation of bodily damage – that there is at most
one way of evasion
open to it; it does not need, then, a subject of consciousness which
will act as it thinks
fit (perform an action in the above-defined sense) on the basis of
pain-information and
other immediate information provided to it. Likewise, if an insect were
a deterministic
automaton, why should an insect feel fear or desire or pleasure? There
is no point at all,
then, to its having these emotions – or to its being in any other
conscious state.
If an animal is in every situation of its life an automaton that reacts
in a
deterministic manner to the given combination of inner and outer
conditions, then there
is no evolutionary advantage whatever in the installation of the
consciousness-agency-
apparatus, having at its center the agent-soul. It is, admittedly, not
a logical
impossibility that a deterministic automaton is conscious, and it may
so have happened
that some conscious living beings are deterministic automata. After
all, evolution has
sometimes produced rather freakish beings. But it is highly unlikely,
in view of the
considerations that I have offered, that a creature is a deterministic
automaton if it is in
fact conscious
. 8. The
Physics-Teaches-Us-Objection

Here is another objection to the views on
consciousness I advocate in
this paper. How
could they be true? Doesn’t physics teach us (1) that the physical
conservation laws are
true, and (2) that determinism is as good as true (to a very high
degree of
approximation) in the mesocosmos where conscious beings live, and (3)
that every
physical event has a physical event as its sufficient cause, if it has
any sufficient cause
at all?
I respond as follows: Since the agent-soul serves its organism by
selecting, in the
light of immediate informations provided to it in consciousness, from
among
nomologically possible continuations of the past history of the world
(i. e., from
continuations Y such that in the past + Y all the regularities which
are the actual laws of
nature are preserved), the physical conservation laws are not violated
by the activities of
the consciousness-agency-apparatus. This takes care of (1).
Concerning (3), which is a principle of
physical causal closure and can
well be
called simpliciter “the Principle of Physical Causal Closure,” I would
like to point out
that it is not something that physics teaches us or could teach us.
Rather, it is one of the
dogmas of physicalistic metaphysics. Curiously, it is advanced by
physicalists as a
strong argument in favor of their position. But the correctness of that
position was not in
question for the physicalists all along; what they are really doing in
advancing the
Principle of Physical Causal Closure is merely to assert a fairly
obvious logical
consequence of their own world view – a world view that is quite
indefeasible and non-
negotiable for them.
The metaphysical nature of the Principle of
Physical Causal Closure
emerges
rather strikingly when we consider that the majority of physicists
presently believes that
some physical events have no sufficient physical cause, the reason for
this being
ultimately that they have not found any plausible sufficient physical
causes for these
events even after the most diligent search. Suppose now that it is
really true that some
physical events do not have any sufficient physical cause. Then –
leaving agnosticism
aside – we have a metaphysical choice:

(a) We can assume that all of these physical events that have no
sufficient physical
cause have no sufficient cause at all, or
(b) we can assume that all of these physical events that have no
sufficient physical
cause have – each of them – a nonphysical sufficient cause (where I
leave it open
whether “nonphysical” means as much as “entirely nonphysical” or as
much as “not
entirely physical”), or
(c) we can assume that some of these physical events that have no
sufficient
physical cause have a nonphysical sufficient cause, and that some of
them have no
sufficient cause at all.

There is no – I repeat no – evidence from physics for either (a) or (b)
or (c); physics, as
the science of physical entities, is entirely neutral between them. The
question whether
we should adopt (a), or (b), or (c) is a purely metaphysical question,
a question strictly
“following upon” physics, and no less so if the question is considered
and answered by
physicists. If we adopt (a), then we can stick to the Principle of
Physical Causal
Closure, but must deny the Principle of Sufficient Cause, which says
that every event
has a sufficient cause. If we adopt (b), then we can stick to the
Principle of Sufficient
Cause, but must deny the Principle of Physical Causal Closure. If we
adopt (c), then we
must deny both the Principle of Physical Causal Closure and the
Principle of Sufficient
Cause. Leaving agnosticism aside, what, in reason, should we do?
Choosing (c), and therefore the denial of both
the Principle of
Physical Causal
Closure and the Principle of Sufficient Cause, is certainly the
rationally least attractive
metaphysical option. But there is nothing that makes the choice of (a)
rationally
preferable to the choice of (b); for the Principle of Sufficient Cause,
which can be
retained if (b) is chosen, is at least as metaphysically attractive as
the Principle of
Physical Causal Closure, which can be retained if (a) is chosen.
So why should mind-body dualists be impressed if physicalists advance
the
Principle of Physical Causal Closure against them, claiming for it the
authority of
physics? It does not in fact fall under that authority, and, from the
metaphysical point of
view, we are certainly not unreasonable if we consider it false.
I have now taken care of (1) and (3) of the
above three objections
against the
views on consciousness I advocate, which objections, taken together,
one might term
the “but-physics-teaches-us-objection.” There yet remains objection no.
(2).
Though physicalists are unwilling to deny what
the majority of modern
physicists believe in: that indeterminism is prevalent in the
microworld, physicalists –
for understandable reasons – nevertheless maintain that in the
mesocosmos determinism
rules. They do admit that its rule in the mesocosmos is not guaranteed
to be absolute
and exceptionless, as was believed in the 19th century; but for all
practical purposes,
physicalists maintain, the rule of determinism in the mesocosmos can be
assumed to be
absolute and exceptionless.
But this is an assumption of physicalism, it
is not something that
physics teaches
us. If it seems to me that I just now freely lifted my right hand, upon
deciding to do so,
then physics does certainly not teach that this event is, except for a
tiny margin of
contrary probability, necessitated on the basis of the laws of nature
by the complete
initial segment of the history of the world that is previous to it. How
could physics teach
any such thing?
Nor does physics teach another consequence of mesocosmic determinism,
namely, that at any point in time before life evolved on this planet
the entire history of
the human species, which is replete with terrible crimes, was already a
more or less
inescapable consequence. All compatibilist attempts to reconcile
freedom and
determinism seem to me just so many attempts to obfuscate the horrible
absurdity of
such a view of human history.
But physics is entirely innocent of such ideas. The reason for this is
simple: it is
not a claim of the science of physics that the laws of nature
discovered by it are in
principle sufficient for explaining everything that happens in the
world on the basis of
initial conditions. The completeness of physics (in the sense exhibited
in the preceding
sentence) is not a claim of physics, but a claim of physicalistic
metaphysics about
physics. As such, the completeness of physics is a matter of
nonscientific, philosophical
belief.
Since physics leaves me a choice, I, as
metaphysician, rather choose to
believe
something else; namely, that also in the mesocosmos determinism is
false and not even
approximately true. Believing this is all the easier for me in view of
the fact that such
belief opens up the possibility of giving a satisfactory account of the
positive function
of consciousness, of what consciousness – consciousness that is not
reduced to
something it is not – is good for in an evolutionary perspective. In a
nutshell:
consciousness is advantageous from an evolutionary point of view, in
the manner I have
described; but it can be so only if determinism in the mesocosmos is
not even
approximately true.

9. The Transcendental Objection
to Physicalism

One may well wonder what makes the
metaphysical positions of
determinism and
physical causal closure so attractive to so many. The explanation I am
going to suggest
for this phenomenon of the history of ideas will bring me to the issue
of the meaning of
consciousness, regarding which I promised to offer some speculations at
the beginning
of this paper.
Physics is a theoretical system that arises out of human consciousness
as an
attempt – a rather successful one – to make systematic sense of our
experiences of the
physical world. As such, physics is an interpretation of a region of
intentional
consciousness, a region shared by the consciousnesses of many. But it
so happens in the
minds of not a few people that they lose sight of the soil out of which
the tree of physics
has grown; perhaps they are blinded by its spectacular growth and by
the many good, or
at least impressive, fruits that it has, in growing, brought forth. For
these people, the
total intentional object of the region of intentional consciousness
that physics is
concerned with, the physical world, turns into something that is
metaphysically absolute
– shown, they believe, to be such by physics itself. The physical world
is thought by
them to be everything, and in consequence physics becomes contaminated
in their
minds by a massive incursion of metaphysics. Determinism and the
Principle of
Physical Causal Closure (or some stronger principle than this) are
assumed without
much hesitation, since they are thought to arise out of physics itself
and to be required
for its very well-being – principles which, if believed in, make it
impossible to
understand what physics really is, and also what consciousness really
is, as is amply
illustrated by the modern philosophy of mind.
The epistemological pathology just described –
which lies at the heart
of
physicalistic naturalism – was pointed out, in effect, as early as
Kant’s Critique of Pure
Reason and as late as Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences and
Transcendental
Phenomenology, and by many other authors, who were inspired by the
tradition of
German Transcendental Philosophy. Analytic Philosophers whose native
tongue is
English have largely ignored this tradition, one of the many reasons
for this being that
they dislike the epistemological idealism that is more or less
explicitly advocated by all
Transcendental Philosophers. But one does not have to become an
epistemological
idealist in order to accept the epistemological criticism of
physicalistic naturalism that is
implicit in Transcendental Philosophy.
Deplorably, the rich notion of consciousness that goes with
Transcendental
Philosophy (including Transcendental Phenomenology) and the earlier
idealistic
philosophy – Berkeley’s and Hume’s idealism foremost – is all but
forgotten in the
Analytic Philosophy of mind that is prevalent today in the
English-speaking world. It is
a much needed corrective for this type of philosophy to take cognizance
of the fact that
there is a notion of consciousness in the history of philosophy
according to which some
philosophers – e. g., Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Husserl – have believed
that consciousness
contains (as a construction remaining entirely within its bounds) the
entire (knowable)
world.5 To this rich notion of consciousness6 I, too, would like to
pledge my allegiance
– though I am not an idealist. I am, of course, not supposing that the
same richness of
consciousness can be found at every level of evolutionary development.
But I would
indeed maintain that certain aspects of consciousness extend all the
way down in the
ladder of conscious life: the presence (in conscious events) of a
subject of
consciousness, the presence of phenomenal qualia, the presence of
intentionality and
hence of intentional objects (though presumably very crude ones in the
lower forms of
conscious life).7

10. The Meaning of Consciousness

If we reject the idealistic idea that, in a
sense, consciousness is
everything, what, then, is
the meaning of consciousness? Martin Buber beautifully expressed the
distance which
any attempt to answer this question must straddle: ‘The conscious mind
[in German: der
Geist] appears in time as a product, even as a by-product of nature,
but nonetheless it is
precisely the conscious mind that timelessly envelops her.’ (Buber
1983, 32; my
translation.) In this paper, I have offered a sketch of that part of
the meaning of
consciousness that is given by the fact that consciousness arises as a
product of nature8
(and consciousness can only seem to be a mere by-product of nature).
But this natural
(biological) meaning is only a part of the entire meaning of
consciousness. The other
part is given by the astonishing fact that this product of nature,
which comes into being
at some point in time, seemingly by accident, and maintains itself in
existence because
it is advantageous in the struggle for survival, nevertheless reveals
to us human beings
the timeless constitution of nature in her totality. How can this be?
We have the two
parts of the meaning of consciousness in our hands; what we do not know
yet is how
they fit together. If we knew how they fit together, then we would
fully comprehend
what the meaning of consciousness is.
I do not think that physicalistic naturalism can find a satisfactory
answer to the
question of how the survival-function and the theoria-function of
consciousness (as I
call it) fit together. The theoria-function of consciousness, and the
universal moral
consciousness that accompanies that function and cannot be found
without it, certainly
cannot be explained as an optimization, brought about by environmental
pressure, of the
survival-function of consciousness. Humanity would be the ruler of this
earth even if it
had never left the level of conscious intelligence that homo habilis
had. It was, of
course, cultural evolution that initiated the theoria-function of
consciousness and
brought it to its present height. But what initiated cultural
evolution?
Nothing less than a divine spark of
enlightenment, I submit. At a
certain point in
time, humans – they were already survivors and in this sense capax
naturae – became
by divine grace capax Dei. They became able (in principle) to know God
to the extent
He chooses to reveal Himself, and able (in principle) to be like Him to
the point of
being images of Him as creator. But since the totality of nature – all
creation – is the
larger part of God’s self-revelation and the prototype of His doings,
humans became at
the same time also able (in principle) to know nature in her totality
and to transform her
morally responsibly in the light of that knowledge. They, who were
already capax
naturae, became not only capax Dei but also capax naturae secundum
imaginem Dei.

NOTES
1 See Dennett 1991.
2 See Chalmers 1996. Chalmers merely upholds the logical
epiphenomenality of consciousness, not the nomological
epiphenomenality. But he sometimes speaks as if logical
epiphenomenality were
epiphenomenality simpliciter
3 This initial segment will have a first moment if the history of the
world has a first moment, or be of infinite duration into the
past if the history of the world is of indefinite duration into the
past.
4 I am grateful to Alvin Plantinga for having drawn my attention to
this.
5 Concerning Husserl’s criticism of naturalism and his comprehensive
notion of consciousness, see
Meixner 2003.
6 If it had not become common these days to associate with the term
“phenomenal consciousness” the
impoverished sense of purely qualitative consciousness, it would not be
amiss to call the notion of
consciousness I adhere to “phenomenal consciousness.” In order to
understand this term in the sense in which I would agree to use it for
my conception of consciousness, one
must understand it in the way Husserl – the originator of Phenomenology
– would have understood it,
i. e., such that phenomenality
does not preclude either abstractness or structure.
7 I am grateful to Josef Quitterer for his comments on this paper,
which made clear to me the need to say more about my concept of
consciousness.
8 More on this subject can be found in Meixner 2004.
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